Blender crashed computer while baking cloth animation
With self collision and a complex object in the center, I can almost guarantee you're running out of RAM and your PC is having to do swap-file operations.
Check your Committed Memory (RAM + Virtual Memory) in Task Manager while doing a bake.

In the short term, you can reduce the number of divisions in the mesh or lower the quality steps.
In the medium term, I can suggest buying a VERY cheap SSD (that you do not care to ruin) and running your page file off of it for bakes.
If you plan on doing this for long I'm sure you'll find plenty of reasons to upgrade your hardware, you won't need any convincing from me.